“”At the end of 2016, Patrick Mameli announced the resurrection of Pestilence, just for a couple of shows in Mexico. Thanks to Tony Choy, Mameli accepted the idea to do a world tour playing the golden oldies in its original form. Or in his own words: “No 8 string guitars. Just a nice trip down memory lane just for the fans”. And don’t forget the fact VIC Records released 2 digital documents filled with live and demo/rehearsal material of Pestilence. As Pestilence made more surprising moves than Marco Materazzi made tackles, Mameli announced a new album called “Hadeon” which will be released by Hammerheart Records in 2017″

After 10 years of shrouded silence, German Death Metal Institution Fleshcrawl was back with 2 new splits and a small tour which even includes an invasion in NEPAL DEATHFEST 2016. An interview with them is published on the latest 4th Issue of VM-Underground Fanzine and also an old
chat from the past republished here when they released their last full­-length. Visit http://www.vm-underground.com/ and download the 4th issue for absolutely free; which is filled with tons of menacing reviews and interviews of feral acts from the deepest underground.

Posted in Bardomethodology, this is a interview with a faceless artist who wants all focus placed on the art itself. Read his explanation as to how a cynical nihilist justifies taking the stage to preach to the masses a belief in nothing.

mgla

2016-06-01

by Niklas Göransson

When another media-shy orchestra graced Sweden’s capital, I lay to rest a decade-old personal boycott and met with the faceless artist who wants all focus on the art itself. He explains how a cynical nihilist justifies taking the stage to preach to the masses a belief in nothing.
– I don’t feel emotions the way most people do, the one time I do feel something is when playing music.

Stockholm, May 20 – Poland’s MGLA (which means ‘fog’ in their native tongue and is spelled with some weird L) played a sold out 650 capacity venue with DEGIAL and VORUM as supporting acts. While the general clientèle left a fair bit to be desired, it was greatly sentimental seeingShadow Records back in business and equally heart-warming to note that label manager Marcus Tena (TRIUMPHATOR) hasn’t reformed his characteristic service-with-a-smite approach.

– Luckily I’m drunk, he grumbled from behind the merch stand, or I would have punched someone by now.

When the headlining act took the stage around midnight, they did so as a relatively new musical acquaintance for me – I’d been aware of them for many years but never actually given them a listen until ten days prior.

Photo: Joanna Osoba

In the early two thousands, a small rural town in the Czech Republic became the reluctant host for a metal festival called Open Hell. A poignant name for this amazing spectacle which was frequented by the absolute scum of the European black and death metal scene, featuring preposterously cheap booze and not a single security guard to be seen – it was glorious. In 2005, headlining DISSECTION closed Open Hellforever, hours before they were originally scheduled to perform. The festival was cut short by the police after the rampaging had escalated out of control and started affecting the local populace. In the 2004 edition, I observed a Polish gentleman being chastised in a rather humbling fashion and was later told that this individual was ‘the guy from MGLA’. As a result, despite receiving multiple recommendations I never bothered checking them out; it simply wouldn’t have been possible to listen without that scene playing in my head. A week and a half before the gig I happened to see pictures of the members – the founder, guitarist, bass player and vocalist who is known only as ‘M’ along with drummerDarkside, and was mildly surprised to discover that it had been neither of them who was the recipient of the walloping in question. I realised then that my twelve-year personal embargo had been instigated by misinformation and thus completely redundant.

– I understand, says a somewhat confused M as I ramble on about the above, I also ignore some bands because of their members.

From its inception in 2002, KRIEGSMASCHINE had been the duo’s main band – with MGLA functioning as an occasional studio project. This arrangement lasted until 2012, when the mists absorbed the war wagon and the latter was reserved for recording activity while the former brought to the stage.

– Due to typical life stuff happening, people moving and so on, regular rehearsals were no longer possible with KRIEGSMASCHINE so we were unable to keep playing live.

Instead of exchanging the line-up, the two of them decided to have a go atMGLA with a full band setting. Having recruited live membersShellShocked (bass) and Silencer (guitars) from MEDICO PESTE, they rehearsed for almost a full year before playing their first show.

– First year of live activity we played five shows, the year after it was nine shows, then sixteen and now it’s 40.

–

In our initial email exchange, M explained that the lack of interviews available is due to MGLA best being experienced rather than studied. I find it strange how knowing more about the band would detract from the experience.

– MGLA should be represented by what we do in the studio and on stage, at least in the context of core ideas. The band communicates in a much more focused and compressed way than I ever could, talking like this over a coffee – it takes hundreds if not thousands of hours to complete what you ultimately hear on a CD. MGLA is a distilled form of our innermost thoughts and comments.

There is an additional reason why M feels he’d rather let the band represent itself.

– I’m not really a particularly interesting person – the compelling stuff is my music, not my self. I’m just a guy.

The desire for inhuman representation is mirrored by their stage attire, which is tailored to shift focus from the musicians to their music.

– We wear hoodies and leather jackets, effectively making us indistinguishable from 90 percent of the audience – the only difference is that our faces are draped. We seek uniformity to remove the ego of our person, leaving nothing but a vessel – a tool. On stage we’re not individuals, we are a unit.

M’s lyrics aren’t written in the genre-typical short bursts of attempted infernal poetry, they look more like a flowing social commentary divided up into paragraphs rather than verses.

– Linguistically, they’re not yet at the level I’d like them to be but I’m trying to accomplish something that can stand on its own merit and makes sense even without sound. They’re not simply complimentary rhythmic structures for the instruments; they are of equal value as the musical content so I dedicate significant time to them.

They come off as heavily laden with cynical nihilism; does this reflect your personality?

– To a large degree – yes, I’m afraid so. The easiest way this can be summed up is that there are men of faith and men of doubt; I am of the latter type.

Going by said lyrics, one might get the impression that he views his fellow humans as little more than breathing disappointments.

– Lessons of life in general, there have been lots and lots of incidents that contribute to my general worldview. Believe me, I’d love to be more optimistic but any such attempts tend to be disproven. I try to be a kind person and an easy-going guy but I have very limited trust. When talking to me, it takes quite a while to actually speak to me and not just my outer shell.

Isn’t it slightly contradictory though; travelling around the world and taking the stage to proclaim your disinterest in people and life in general?

– No, I don’t think so. That is not my purpose for doing this; it’s for the experience itself. I’m hardly ever angry, rarely happy – I don’t feel emotions the way I think most people do. The one moment I can repeatedly feel something is when playing music.

Emotions are precisely what he believes should govern and empower music.

– Concepts, themes, aesthetics and ideologies – all secondary; what lies at the very foundation of black metal music is the emotional content.

No matter the conceptual theme – as long as there is genuine passion invested in it, M believes it will shine through. Academic accuracy or poetic mastery means nothing if the voice conveying it lacks conviction.

– If someone is praying to the goat in his lyrics and actually means it – in the sense that they react with it somehow; interesting things can come out of this. Naming every single one of Shub Niggurath’s thousand young won’t make anything worthwhile – but a guy actually worshipping the fucking head of a goat, this could potentially generate something meaningful.

He ponders for a moment before adding:

– I think that might very well have been the most in-depth statement that’s been made by me in relation to MGLA.

–

Despite claiming to be happiness resistant, I find it hard to believe that the band’s recent success doesn’t brighten his day.

– Of course, it helps. Basic things like music equipment for example – for the first time we don’t have to worry about affording new amps, cables, stands and other accessories. The album sales pay for our backline, we’re constantly improving it.

This almost makes it sound as if the happiness is logistical in origin, rather than satisfaction from having created something others enjoy.

– Not at all, feedback is much appreciated. I have a great deal of respect for people who take the time to listen to the music, read the lyrics and come up with comments and observations – basically react in any way. It’s always surprising to me that people appreciate our music sinceMGLA is carefully moulded after our own preferences.

He’s not joking – the latest album “Exercises in Futility” (2015) was crafted entirely from conception to creation by M and Darkside, with literally no third party insight.

– The two of us did everything – composing, recording, performance, mixing, mastering, graphic design, lyrics, even releasing it to some point. At no time during the recording process did we play the songs for other people. Our idea was to form it purely after the vision we had, with no outside influence and I believe we succeeded in this.

From its inception, all of MGLA’s music has been recorded in their own studio – No Solace.

– It’s basically a rehearsal space that’s been worked into a studio, it has all equipment we need. It’s constantly being upgraded, as are my skills as a recording engineer.

Besides his own work, he’s also worked as a studio engineer and producer for bands such as fellow countrymen INFERNAL WAR and CULTES DES GHOULES.

– It’s great because I get to work with friends and leave my prints on albums I think are extraordinary. It’s also a learning process for me, because everything I do in regard to recording and mixing is then experience collected – knowledge I can channel into my own work.

All of MGLA’s albums have been co-released by their own label – also called No Solace, and Finland’s Northern Heritage Records.

Are you going to stick with them or are you entertaining other offers?

– We get them all the time but releasing our work in cooperation withNorthern Heritage is perfect. I think this is the way it’s going to stay as it gives us complete control over everything. We don’t have to schedule interviews or do any PR; most importantly we don’t have to do any sort of meet-and-greet shit or other things you’d expect at some point when working with a bigger label.

Their choice of label has not been entirely without complication. Even though no one is accusing MGLA of political extremism they have recently been targeted by ‘anti-fascists’, which led to the lone German date of their upcoming September tour with BEHEMOTH being cancelled. From what I could ascertain by running online discussions through Google Translate, the outrage stems from Northern Heritagehaving previously collaborated with a Finnish black metal band that are deemed controversial.

– Yes, he confirms while shaking his head, that was the problem. The venue is managed by some kind of left wing youth organisation so when the show was announced they had their local antifa perform background checks on the bands.

Having discovered their dubious associations, the venue demanded thatMGLA issue a statement denouncing their label.

– Obviously, from the moment you receive this type of email, you know you’re not going to play there. We simply told the truth – we are a black metal band and we release our music on black metal labels. We haven’t signed our deal for political reasons but we support Northern Heritageone hundred percent – if someone has a problem with that then so be it.

One can’t help but notice how many media outlets who were aghast whenBELPHEGOR were beset by Christians and then banned by the authorities in Russia, never seem to object to this kind of censorship.

– I recently did an interview for a German magazine and there were of course a couple of questions on politics and black metal. I explained that I’m not interested at all; if you want to separate politics from art, don’t ask the artists about politics in the first place.

M’s views on most things material are readily available in the lyrics but spirituality appears to be a theme left mostly unexplored.

– Not entirely; there is metaphysics in MGLA, just not from the usual angles. It’s more mysticism than magic – no ceremonial accessories, no candles, robes or any of the usual esoteric attire. It’s not so much a visual element as it is conceptual; finite man versus the infinite something.

He speculates that being drawn to the aesthetic side of things is human nature, behaviour that seems to enjoy prevalence regardless of theological outlook.

– The whole idea of ritual, no matter if it’s the Roman Catholic mass or rites from the Order of Nine Angles, is that there are predefined sets of movements and words – then incense, sounds, specific clothes and so on. I’d be inclined to say that a lot of focus is being put… well, wasted if you ask me, on the aesthetics rather than the actual core. My interest in spirituality is to the highest possible extent devoid of this aspect.

M has self-diagnosed himself as ‘spiritually challenged’.

– Look at the latest album cover artwork, it shows a blind man reaching for something but gripping nothing. If you add the pieces together – the spiritual outlook that’s been reflected in MGLA, you’ll find that we genuinely would like to connect to something – to relate to something metaphysical, yet all we grasp is black void.

The cover artwork in question goes rather well with the lyrical theme, which is why I first assumed it was commissioned artwork.

– No, he clarifies, we have stolen it – it was made by the nineteenth century French illustrator Marcel Roux. When working on the layout for“Enemy of Man” (KRIEGSMASCHINE, 2014), we were looking through various pictures I’d accumulated.

Suddenly, they found themselves staring at the motif that ended up as the visual representation of the “Exercises in Futility”.

– At the very first glance we knew it was perfect, with the blind man…

The one referenced in the lyrics?

– Yes. The funny part is that the lyrics were written only after we found the cover image, so it ended up leaving an imprint on the music too.

There’s something about the rigid posture of a proper, authentic blind. As if extended arms reached to pass his blindness onto others.

These lyrics are in turn influenced by French-Romanian philosopherEmil Cioran.

– We find inspiration in many things – art, philosophy and literature; then the two of us act as filter to select what we see most fitting and it ends up as MGLA.

A new album is in the works, their first after the so-called commercial breakthrough. It should be interesting to see how this affects the relative musical consistency that has characterised their 16-year lifespan thus far.

– MGLA started out as my revelation and at some point it became the shared vision of two people. Darkside is not only the drummer, he’s one hundred percent involved in the band and everything related to it. We have a vision that needs to be realised – I doubt there’ll be any drastic changes as we still have a lot of work remaining in this aspect. I have no idea what the future holds for us, it’s a path being paved as we walk it – but as long as our work is fuelled by emotions, we’ll continue doing it.

INVISIBLE ORANGES published a very interesting interview with master of all horrific twist KING FOWLEY. Though i felt sad when the interview ended all of a sudden. It’s weird like Deceased music. “Supernatural Addiction” is one of my all time favorite extreme metal record. Horrific and spine chilling storytelling of master King Fowley and the magnificent compositions are simply otherworldly. Always pleasure to listen. All hails to the sinister force of mighty DECEASED.

Enjoy the Interview.

…

Retrospective death metal is gaining ground daily. Hell, there’s a new Gruesome EP around the corner. Given the state of affairs, it’s critical to remember the granddaddy of all retro death metal bands. Deceased, the first band signed to Relapse records, began their career looking back on the golden age of horror-inflected classic metal from the pre-thrash ’80s. But Deceased was also groundbreaking. They innovated their own variety of the melodic death metal sound not long after the Swedes, but before almost anyone in the US had adopted the sound.

Now’s as great a time as any to remember Deceased. Transcending Obscurity is repressing their early out of print albums, beginning with 1997’s Fearless Undead Machines. We’ve got a full stream of that album below, as well as a long chat with Deceased’s drummer and singer King Fowley, whose approach to the genre remains as rooted in hard work and perfectionism as it was when Fearless Undead Machines first rose from the grave nineteen years ago.

Full disclosure: Transcending Obscurity label boss Kunal Choksi has contributed to Invisible Oranges in the past.

It’s good to hear that Deceased is still playing shows, at least, because you guys haven’t done a record in what seems like forever.

It’s been a while, since 2011. I mean, that’s a long story, but […] we have never been one of those bands. We’re not going to just shit a record out and call it the new record. We’re totally 100% proud of everything we’ve done in our discography. We don’t think there’s ever been any lulls. I’m not saying everything’s high and mighty, but we’re all proud of everything we’ve done. We’ve never said “Well, this could have been better, that could have been better.” Sure, as far as getting better as you go production-wise you have to learn from your mistakes. But as far as quality of the songs we’re writing, in our opinion, they’re very good, and we’re proud of that. We ain’t going say “Oh, here’s the new Deceased record because it’s been five years.”

My first Deceased record was Supernatural Addiction, and no record afterward has disappointed me after hearing that one. If someone were to ask me where in your discography to begin, I would start with Supernatural Addiction and beyond that say “I don’t know, pick one.”

Well, that’s cool. That’s my all time favorite Deceased record. You never know one that came afterwards better than that first one, yes. Well, we’re trying, bro. We really are. We want to get some new stuff out and playing live means the world to me. We have to. We’ve got some really good players and good friends that are in the band that were long time supporters of the band. I pulled nobody off the streets, people I didn’t know. We never put an ad up saying, “Hey, who wants to play for Deceased?” It’s been friends of mine that have asked to come out and play on the road with us. I’m very happy with who’s playing in the band right now live. I think we are a really, really tight unit live. I’m very proud of what we are able to accomplish on stage.

Is there anyone in the live unit right now that I might recognize from something else? Because I have never had the chance to see Deceased.

I’ll just give you a quick run down. And this will be quicker than you think it will take, but in 2006, Mike [Smith, guitar] stopped playing live, okay? In 2006, after he stopped playing live, we brought in a guy named Shane Fuegel who was in a local D.C. band called Biovore, somewhere between Voivod, The Bad Brains kind of style. We always loved that guy. He used to come to all the shows. He used to always drum roadie for me. He was just a super cool guy, and he played guitar. And I said, “Hey, you want to be the guy to take fucking Mike’s place?” He was honored, and he came right in. He’s still a fan since then.

But in 2007, Mark Adams, the other guy that was pretty much one of the originators of the band from back to 1985, he basically gave up on playing music out of the blue. It was kind of weird. He decided he wanted to get married. He moved out of the country. He now lives in The Virgin Islands. And he didn’t want to do it anymore. So basically within a year’s time, I lost both of the guitar players for the live front.

After that, I decided to bring in this other guitar player named Matt Altieri who lived in Massachusetts. He’s a good guy. I love the guy. I knew him from a message board back then, and we used to always talk, and he was a big Deceased freak. And I just said, “Hey man,” because I liked what he was doing with his stuff. He had that Hail Plankton band. And I said, “I like what you’re doing. Your speed picking’s good and stuff.” I said, “You wanna come down and jam with Deceased?” He’s like, “Dude, Deceased is like, one of my favorite bands.” And I was like, “I know.” It’s always important for somebody to know the tunes and like, heard them before. Instead of me just handing you 20 new songs, “Well, go learn them.” He would at least have heard them before.

He came down and he jammed. He played in the band for about four years. He actually went on our West Coast tour in 2010, which was our 25th anniversary. Everything was fine, but the problem with him was that he didn’t drive a car, and he lived in Massachusetts. So he was always busing to get down to me, which was already a five to six-hour drive. And then, me and him would drive down to practice, which is three more for us. He was looking at a lot of long days and a lot of hard times because of the busing. He was in until about 2010.

Switching back to 2008, Les [Snyder], the original bass player from basically the classic lineup, moved to Texas and got married, but he wanted to be in the band. But money caught up with him. If we’re going to play a show in D.C. you’re going to have to fly from Texas in and out, that’s 350 bucks and he started realizing, “I can’t afford this shit.” When he can he still plays with us, but not as often. So we got a guy who was a friend of mine named Krump. Chris Krump. He lived in New York and he did drive, but after a while it got to him too, because it’s pretty stretched out. It took a while to get all the stuff right.

Now where it stands here, we have Shane is on guitar. We have a guy named Matt Ibach on guitar who was also the guitarist on October 31, my other band, and they both live 30 minutes from each other. And Walter White is playing bass for us who has also been in a band with Matt Ibach before, which was called Acid Queens, which was all NWOBHM covers. They jammed before. So basically they all get together. And on drums is still Dave “Scarface” Castillo who actually played on the As the Weird Travel On album. He’s the live drummer. All four of them basically can jam any time they want in D.C. and I’m three hours away. They get all the instruments down. They start learning more of the old tunes. I come down, I throw the vocals and some practices and we go on tour play them.

I always ask this. I live in Seattle, what are the odds I get to see you on tour?

We’re trying to, but I mean I don’t know about Seattle. We played Seattle [before], we put it on a Sunday. It was weird because we went there and this [promoter] said, “You know what, this show’s going to be a bust. I knew it from the get-go. I took you because I like you guys, but there’s the biggest tattoo convention in town and everybody’s there. I should have had you guys play tomorrow, but I heard you were going back home.” I said, “Yeah, this is our last show. We’re flying out of here. We’re flying out of Seattle home.” And he goes, “Yeah, I just booked your show, wanted to help you guys out.” I would say there were 20 people there. [this] was 2010. We basically came the night before from Portland, Oregon and played that show. Some of us flew home. Shane drove the van back home. I didn’t care. I mean, you’re going to get big shows, little shows. Doesn’t matter to me. And in 31 years of me doing this shit, I’ve seen it all. I’ve played for 50,000 people and I’ve played for nobody. It doesn’t make a difference to me. It’s all about fun. As far as getting back out there it’s just a matter of shooting up the coast. Usually we’ll fly to California. And then it’s like…what is it, 10 hours up to Portland and then 2 more hours up to Seattle, something like that? I can’t promise you this year. We’re supposed to go to the West Coast and do a show or two with Autopsy in November. And we’re probably getting no closer than Oakland, California to you man.

We have plans to come do everything again. I mean we really do. We have plans to play all over the place again, probably next year. Within the next two years we’ll be up your way again. We have to. I mean we played there once and like I said, it was what it was. Of course, there was some big deal going on. That people had to do their thing. It is what it is, but we definitely want to get back there. We will. I promise you we will.

You guys are reissuing three records and one of them, the one that’s coming out that we’re doing this interview for, is you’re reissuing Fearless Undead Machines. Do you have any particular memories of that record?

Every record has its own memories and its own special place in my heart. The thing I remember most about that record, and I always tend to say this, is that it was the album that kind of changed us. I mean, basically when we started the band in 1985 it was me and a guy named Doug and we were buddies, we were stoners and fucking young kids out to take on the world and teen angst and all that stuff. We were just out to write the fastest, craziest, over the top weirdest songs you could write. For the most part they were basically simplistic EP songs.

Those came out on demos in ’86 ’88 ’89. Evil Side of Religion, Birth by Radiation, and Nuclear Exorcist. In 1990 we were asked to sign to Relapse Records. We were the first band to ever sign to that label. We went in and we did Luck of the Corpse. At that time, Doug was kind of on his way out of the band. He started seeing the world differently than me. He kind of wanted to do his own thing. He ended up leaving the band.

So Mike Smith took his place right after that and we went in and did that EP called 13 Frightened Souls. When we did that there was just two new songs. Just trying to see where we wanted to go. It was a different world now, because it was no longer Doug and I, who wrote most of the stuff over the last half of a decade. After that we had no place to practice and we were kind of like, literally for the next year and a half, all over the place practicing at storage spaces, people’s basements, living room. Just keep getting thrown out of all these fucking places because it was basically set up and hope the cops don’t come.

In that time we kind of threw together The Blueprints for Madness, which was our album from ’95. When we did that, I don’t want to say we didn’t have a direction, because we did. We wanted to make this totally over the top insane record, which is why we chose the album title, The Blueprints for Madness. To me it was kind of like a kitchen sink thing where we had weird keyboards, there was even some orchestration in some parts, a lot of timing changes. When we were done with it we kind of said to ourselves, “You know, that’s cool and all, but there is more to us than this.”

Me and Mike especially sat down and in ’96 we actually built a space in the basement of my house, we built a room inside of a room. We decided, “Now we can stay here. Let’s bring some recording gear in here. Let’s record all the practices. Let’s start from the get-go. Let’s start this album here and let’s finish this album here and we won’t have anything else on our mind except writing this record.” So for the next year we did that and we noticed we’re really into more than heavy metal. We loved everything from heavy metal to pop music to hardcore to disco to classic rock. All this stuff was stuff we loved. Of course, we didn’t want to start this out like fucking Journey, but we did have all these influences.

One of the things that I’ve always tried to put in Deceased is a memorability of it all. I think our songs are catchy. I like to have a course. I like to have something that sticks out; a melody to every song. I want the songs to be normal. I don’t want them to just come and go as a whirlwind of blur. That’s one thing that we started to notice. We started to put stuff like, “Oh, this is cool. This part here’s kind of like Queen stuff. This part’s kind of like Villain, this part’s kind of like Repulsion.” You had a little bit of everything. Nothing was intentional, but it was deep inside of us. Our influences were just starting to come out. That’s the album that really started to come out and as far as the concept for that record, that went back to the demos from back in ’88 ’89.

Sure, kind of now the zombie thing is way overdone and done to death, but at the time, going back as far as the demos, it was still pretty young and unique. Night of the Living Dead wasn’t even 20 years old yet at the time. It came from the best childhood things in my mind. And when we got back to it, and got that concept, by then I was older I could think deeper, I had more ideas for the storyline instead of just making demo songs around this basic thing.

That’s the thing that really sticks out to me is how far the band came, as far as better vocals, better playing, better lead work, better arrangements, just better everything. We really made a big fucking jump from Blueprints for Madness in ’95 to the Fearless Undead Machines in ’97.

That is one thing I’m proud of. I think Deceased sounds like Deceased. No one can compare it to anything and I’m proud to say that. It’s almost like we have our own sound.

That’s absolutely right. You guys definitely preceded the idea of melodic death metal. Everyone brings up the Europeans. No one brings up that you guys had more clean vocals and these sort of soaring melodies before almost anyone else in America did.

Well that’s true. I was listening to, one day years and years and years ago now, but when Paradise Lost got popular, I think it’s cool how they mix this clean guitar with this heavy vocal. I was thinking to myself—and I wasn’t bragging this up; or kissing my own ass or something—this is pretty much what we did on the song “The Nuclear Exorcist” in 1989. That came in with a clean guitar part with a low end vocal and then it kind of took off from there. Then everybody was saying how unique this was. And I was thinking, you know, we were kind of doing this already. I wasn’t knocking them for what they were doing, but I was saying, “Maybe we were a little bit ahead of the pack on a lot of that stuff.”

I think hopefully, a good reissue campaign will maybe give you guys a little more ability to bring what you’ve done to light. Do we know what the other two albums that are going to be reissued are yet?

I’d like to do them all with them one by one, but basically I said, “I’ll pick a number, let’s just go with three.” And Kunal goes, “Okay, well do you have one to start with?” I said, “What do you want to start with?” He said, “Fearless.” I said, “That’s fine.” Some people say that’s “our masterpiece” or whatever, and this and that. I said we’ll probably end up doing it. We haven’t even decided on this, so this isn’t for sure. We are definitely doing Fearless. I would think we should probably do The Luck of the Corpse because that’s the other one people see as a starting point for us. And then I think we should do Surreal Overdose which as of now, is the latest record we’ve done. That way you get spectrum. It kind of spans ’90 to now.

Even though Supernatural is my favorite, I think this might be a good starting point, middle point, ending point for now. That’s the plan at this point is to do those records. And we’ll do them one by one, but I didn’t want to just come in and do Fearless Undead Machines and kind of walk away.

We all know today albums don’t sell like they used to and stuff like that. It’s going to be a work in progress, but with some dedication, you can push it as far as you can push it. I don’t expect the world. He probably doesn’t either. We’re just trying to get some new fucking ears on it that didn’t get to hear it back in the day for whatever reason.

First of all that’s worthy and second of all, I think Supernatural was reissued not that long ago, was it not?

Yeah. They’ve all been reissued. What it is when we left Relapse I pretty much took all the records with me. They let them all go out of print one by one. And today I’d love to do Luck of the Corpse. Horror Pain Gore Death was the label that wanted to re-do that and I said, sure. We ran 1,000 copies and that flooded the market for about a year. Then when that was gone then it was out of print again. Then my other friend from Lost Apparition Records out of Virginia, he was like, “I’d love to put that out. I love that record.” I said, “All right, let’s put it out again.” So you know, I’m just trying to keep it out there.

Even though it comes out on different record labels, I just want to keep the stuff out there. Fearless I actually re-released a few years ago as a double disc. I put it out with the demos and stuff like that. It was out of print again because Relapse let everything fall out. Then Hell’s Headbangers started putting out a few. They didSupernatural Addiction. Then The Blueprints for Madness was on Severed Records. I gotta keep it out there so somebody can get it. Someone messaged me “I can’t find Luck of the Corpse” years ago. “Well, go check eBay. You’ll probably find it.” They’re like, “I just saw a copy for $65.” I’m like, “fuck that. Let me get it repressed”. What’s it cost, $1,200 to press a pallet of CDs? Probably cheaper than that now. Sell it for a good price and let people hear it, that’s all.

People say the vinyl bubble is going to burst.

It is. I mean it’s back again for now. It’s weird. It’s a weird world. People going out now don’t buy CDs anywhere, only vinyl. Now cassettes are popular again. And fucking VHS tapes are popular again.

What’s your format? What do you like things in?

I like different formats for different reasons. I love the vinyl because you get the biggest artwork. You can open it up and look at the lyrics. You can see the collages on the other side. The vinyl sounds so warm and nice on the stereo, it’s got the low end. It’s just pressed the best. But then, you can’t take it in your car and you can’t drive it around, that’s when your CD comes in handy and stuff like that.

Now of course it’s all iPods with the cord, you plug everything in, but for some reason that just seems goofy to me. It always has. For some people, that’s fine and dandy for them. I like streaming apps, but if I like the record I want to have it in some kind of real format. Usually for me, for most of my life, it was vinyl. In the last few years it’s been more CDs just because of being older in the space of my house, and things like that. But I also grew up with millions and millions of cassettes. You can find them for a dime or a quarter lots of times. That’s how you get albums by bands you can’t afford to buy their whole fucking discography. Whatever it could be, Aerosmith’s Toys in the Attic or Led Zeppelin’s “No Quarter”. Another thing is—you might even be too young for this—I’m a big 8-track collector. I’ve got over 1,500 8-tracks.

I don’t think I’ve ever even seen an 8-track.

They’re a really bad format. It’s so weird. It’s four channels and almost every time you get one, at least one of the channels will fade out and fade up on the next channel in the middle of a song. Most of the time they usually run about 10 minutes a side. If the record is about 40 minutes, you’re looking at fades running 11 minutes on that side and at the 10 minute mark it starts fading down and there’s nothing and all of the sudden a little pop and it’ll go to the next track, it’ll fade up and you’ll still be in the same song. It does it on an Ozzy Osbourne’s “Crazy Train.” Halfway through it’ll fade out, next track fades back up and the song finishes. It’s pretty ugly and there’s no fidelity to it at all. It’s basically a mud bath out of the gate.

But it was something as a kid I collected. By the time I was getting into 8-tracks as a kid they were starting to fade out. They were really cheap. You used to get lots and lots of records for 88 cents. It was in my price range, so to speak. I had all that stuff. Now I go back and collect them. I’m done looking at them now. I’ve got some wild shit over here. Shit that would knock you to hell. Almost all of Black Sabbath up to and including Born Again. So a lot of that. Number of Beast on 8-track.

What’s your approach to storytelling in songs? Because that’s the thing that always stuck out to me about Supernatural Addiction. You and King Diamond are the great storytellers of classic extreme metal, to me. What’s your approach to storytelling?

Well I could tell you this, being that I call the band “Death Metal from the Grave,” we’re of a different era of death metal. When I grew up it wasn’t Incantation. It wasn’t Cannibal Corpse. It wasn’t Obituary. It wasn’t Dying Fetus. It was Cirith Ungol. It was Metal Church. These bands were called death metal because they sang a lot of songs about horror tales. I always used to think, “this is what I’ve got to write about.” When we decided on the name Deceased, it was obvious where it was going. I’m a happy kind of guy. I’m always up and having a blast, but in my mind there’s a lot of warped morbid shit going on.

I’ve always said to myself when I write these songs I don’t want any happy endings ever in our songs. I want there always to be a fork in the road. I want there always to be a twist inside of a twist inside of a twist. I like to sometimes be the narrator of the tragedy and sometimes I like to be the tragedy. I like to set myself up. Which is another reason I like Fearless a lot, because it’s kind of where I started the finding that voice. You’re living that tale, you’re living that horror. You can actually, I think, feel it coming from the voice out of the record. You start to feel that death metal. You start to feel that surge. That bad karma.

And the rest of the writing?

I’ll usually have a song title. I’ll present it usually to Mike, and the band. We will all sit down, “Okay, this is what it’s about.” I’ll say, “I want you to think about this when we play.” Then we play. Sometimes they’ll come back and I’ll be like, “Nah. I’m not feeling that riff for this, but I am feeling that riff for something else,” or, “nah that’s not going to work for anything.”

We start building from stuff and then it becomes like a pot, stew. Then they come together easy. For example, we’ll take Fearless Undead Machines, “The Psychic” from that album came together riff after riff after riff after riff, and it was done. It literally wrote itself in two hours.

Take another song, and we’ll go to Supernatural Addiction, we’ll say something like “Dark Chilling Heartbeat” from that one. The Edgar Allen Poe Telltale Heart song. Basically that one took a while to find the right riffs. It took months. Like I was telling you at the beginning of this interview here, we are always doing things the right way until the song is complete. Everything we do from beginning of the song to the end, is the best we can fucking possibly be.

I know we’ve got it mastered. I’m proud to say this is as good as it’s going to get. “With this song we’ve given it our fucking all.” Then it comes out and you just hope for the best. You hope people say, “Hey, that’s weird. That’s fucking Deceased.” Like you were saying earlier, you know, haven’t had a new album in years. People are sending me fucking messages all the time. “When it’s a record coming out?” We love the fuck out of that. We all do. But until it’s right you can’t do it. That’s the secret. You can’t just throw shit together and call it a fucking record.

This excellent track by track commentary about the reissue of classic death/thrash gem “SERPENT TEMPTATION” posted in No Clean Singing. Discover the insights behind this monster and legendary release from the mastermind brothers, Moyses M. Howard and Francis M. Howard.

In the middle of 1982 two young brothers, Moyses M. Howard and Francis M. Howard — moved with their parents from Rio de Janeiro, Brazil, to New Orleans, Louisiana. It didn’t take long for them to be caught up in the energy of music — joining bands, playing shows… exploring. By 1986 their interests had turned to underground metal, and they formed a band named Incubus with Scott Latour as vocalist. They released a demo in 1987, and then a debut album in 1988 named Serpent Temptation.

A blistering onslaught of death/thrash, the album has been hailed as an underground classic, and it led to a deal with Nuclear Blast, who released the band’s next two albums —Beyond the Unknown(1990) and Discerning Forces (2000) — both of which were recorded by the Howard brothers as a two-piece band, with Francis as vocalist. By the time that third album was released, the band had changed their name to Opprobrium. Eight more years would pass before the band (now based in Tampa) released their fourth album (and most recent to date), Mandatory Evac.

Today, Relapse Records is re-releasing that 1988 classic, Serpent Temptation. It has been remastered for this release by Brad Boatright (Sleep, Obituary, etc.), and it includes four bonus tracks from the band’s 1987 demo, plus an extended booklet. What we’ve got for you on this release date is both a full stream of the remastered album and a track-by-track commentary by the Howard Brothers.

To buy a physical copy of the album, go HERE, and to download a digital copy, visit the Bandcamp page for the album at this location.

Below is a player so you can listen to the music as the brothers provide their thoughts about what you’re hearing.

Francis: For me this song is a great album intro, plus the great riffs that just make the whole album just flow from the beggining.

Moyses: “Battle” was a perfect song to open the album, the eerie sound effect of destruction and chaos right in the beginning plus the long intro kinda showed the listener what is to come. This is one of the songs that we started to have more emphasis in the song structure, writing longer songs, me and Francis were having so many ideas for the song, that whatever ideas for a part, etc., we put it in the song. Francis had many open spaces in the arrangements which gave him the opportunity to put 3 guitar solos in the song, which I think was awesome.

Voices From The Grave

Francis: This song is short but I really dig the heavy parts and how the vocals fit the song just perfect.

Moyses: In “Voices” Francis and I tried a combination of heavy and fast. I think all the riffs and the arrangements fit perfectly in this song, this song came out very naturally and it flowed relly well when we were putting it together. It kinda takes the listener by surprise, we start the song with this very powefull heavy part and then we shock the listener when we go to the blast beats and people don’t expect that. Then we let the listener breathe for a while and again end the song with pure brutal mayhem — this is a great song when played live, total chaos. I think Scott came out with fantastic lyrics for this song. This a song where the music and the lyrics were a perfect combination.

Sadistic Sinner

Francis: The riff on this song is just fun to listen to. It’s catchy.

Moyses: I like this song a lot, this is the only song in the album where we don’t use blast beats. Francis got some excellent catchy riffs in this song, and once again the arrangement and song structure worked perfect in this song, and everything flows really well. Very powefull, very brutal, great song to play live. This is a very brutal song lyrically. Everything worked great in “Sadistic Sinner”.

Incubus (Opprobrium)

Francis: Originally it was meant to represent our band playing live, but since the band name changed to OPPROBRIUM, it represents OPPROBRIUM now.

Moyses: A song about when the band is playing live, it tells about the energy of the band on stage, the energy that we send to the audience, and the energy that the audience sends back to us. I love the intensity of this track, all the riffs in the song combined perfectly with each other, this song really flows. This is another fast one. I’m very happy how this song came out.

Blaspheming Prophets

Francis: The riff is just total energy. What can I say.

Moyses: This was a very challenging song for me and Francis when we first started to write it. Francis had come out with so many great riffs that it kinda became one of the longest songs in the album, also a very technical one. “Blaspheming” showed us the potential to write epic, technical songs with lots of parts and transitions which we love to use in our music. Although it has lots of riffs in it, “Blaspheming Prophets” is a very powerfull and brutal song.

Hunger For Power

Francis: I like the lyrics for this song. Very true till this day.

Moyses: “Hunger For Power” has a very heavy verse. The song builds up to an ending blast beat with very eerie riffs. I find the combination in this song of heavy slow riff with ultra fast blast beats very interesting. It’s a very unpredicatble song. Another great song with many combinations of riffs and parts, it’s very diverse.

Serpent Temptation

Francis: This song was inspired by what happened in Genesis in the Bible. Cool lyrics.

Moyses: We picked this song to be the title track of our debut album due to the great title. We felt it was very original and different, plus the cool lyrical content, and it’s one of the fastest songs on the album, It’s straight-forward, and it’s based on the book of Genesis. All the riffs and song structure flowed really well in this song.

Undergound Killers

Francis: I like this song, I think its a great song to end the album with. Just great. The lyrics reminds me of a Punisher movie LOL.

Moyses: Another great song on the album with lots of tempo changes, another one of my favorites, very brutal from beginning to end. The lyrics are very interesting — the title says what this song is about, the lyrics are like a mini-story or something. Very cool, it kinda surprises the reader. The song structure is very technical, it’s one of the most brutal songs on the album. “Underground Killers” was the perfect track to be the last song of the album.

Francis: The recording processes back in those days used to be all live. It’s not like today, where it’s all done piece by piece in the studio. I rememeber that this album during the recording was just great, especially listening to the songs in an studio enviroment in a professional way for the first time.

Moyses: We were very well-rehearsed when we entered the studio to record Serpent Temptation, so the drum tracks came out excellent. I was very happy with my playing on the album. After I finished all my drum parts, Francis started to record the guitar tracks and solos, and Scott the bass. After all the music was recorded Scott begun to lay down the vocals. The basic tracks were recorded in Metairie (New Orleans), then we went to another studio in Los Angeles (North Hollywood) to mix the album.

On the Equipment Used for Serpent Temptation (1988):

Francis: For ST I used Carvins amps and Boss overdrive pedal, very simple setup, with a bit of reverb. I also used a Carvin pick-up in a Squire guitar from Fender, with an original Floyd Rose tremolo.

An excellent and in-depth interview with nihilistic and profound polish Black Metal Band MGŁA, published by No Clean Singing.

(Last September I sent interview questions to Poland’s Mgła, the creators of one of the best albums of 2015 — Exercises In Futility. Mgła have been very busy since then, and I had given up hope that the questions would be answered, but yesterday we received them. Some of the topics have been overtaken by time, but others remain relevant, and I hope you’ll find the answers as interesting as I do. I thank M. for answering the questions when it would have been easy to forget about them altogether.)

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Forgive me, but I would like to ask you a few questions about the lyrics to the songs on the new album before getting to the music. I read them before listening and thought they were eloquent and powerful (as usual), though quite bleak and even nihilistic. They changed my mood and state of mind before hearing a note, as if preparing the way. What inspired you in your writing this time?

Life itself, as obvious as it may sound. That’s what the album title refers to. The lyrics are a condensed form of our commentary to the world.

Apart from being a lyricist for your own music, do you have other experience as a writer, whether in writing poetry or otherwise?

No.

For this album, did you write the lyrics after composing the music, or did you have them in mind as you were composing? And what connection do you see between the words and the music?

Collecting ideas, sketches of lyrics, references, etc. started immediately upon completion of „With hearts toward none”. Actual process of working these into final form of lyrics for „Exercises in futility” happened after composing and recording of all music. Of course we had the ideas, overall atmosphere, etc. in mind while composing. We wanted the vocals to keep a rather natural melody of sentences, in some way as one would read poetry aloud, rather than cutting them into short, very rhythmized phrases, which is often the case with arrangement of lyrics in metal.

From my perspective, extreme metal lyrics are rarely worth reading on their own, and rarely serve much purpose other than to give the vocalist a shape for the rhythms of the growls and shrieks. Especially since it’s hard for listeners to make out the words anyway, I’m not saying that’s necessarily a bad thing. But you obviously attach importance to the words, and have done so since MGŁA’s beginning. Why do you think that is?

We see the lyrics as a crucial part of what we do as Mgła, and the lyrical/conceptual content is on the same level of importance as the music itself. Mgła deals with very real emotions; there is no story-telling involved, and the lyrics are meant to work on a certain level of quality, not just „underlining the atmosphere” or as you said, providing rhythmic structure for vocals. We put a part of our lives in Mgła and it just doesn’t feel right to take any shortcuts there.

Do the words express your general view of the world, or perhaps only the darkest corners of your thoughts? And I ask that because, although dark and often melancholy, the music seems to me full of life and inspired by passions that go beyond fatalism and indignation?

It obviously deals with the darker and more negative aspects of ourselves. The sort of emotions that we don’t really want to express at all, and only allow ourselves to do so while working (composing, performing) with black metal. To me, real emotional content is what constitutes Mgła first and foremost.

One last question about the lyrics: Did you compose them in English (which would be my guess), or did you first write them in Polish and then translate?

Some notes, lines, sources etc. were in Polish first, but we were working in English while actually writing lyrics. As mentioned, we wanted a natural melody of words, and it was logical to already work in the language that the lyrics would be sung in.

Okay, I’ll tear myself away from the subject of lyrics and turn to the songs as a whole. I saw a comment on MGŁA’s Facebook page (I assume by you) that the new album was meant to be the “most coherent recording to date” and that it “turned out to be the rawest (as in: most natural, not necessarily harshest) one.” Could you elaborate on what you meant by those statements, and especially the words “coherent” and “natural”?

Coherent as in most condensed form, fulfilling the vision as close to the ideal without any unwanted parts which wouldn’t contribute to the core content of the album, no matter how good they would be sounding on their own. The amount of material thrown away during composing could easily make another two albums. Natural, as in we had most of the sound ready straight after tracking and the mix was mostly simple setting of levels, panning and a few basic effects here and there.

What do you think enabled you to achieve these results? Was it a different approach to writing the songs, i.e., a conscious effort to achieve a particular result, or a difference in the way they were recorded, or both?

We worked on the album in a quite hermetic way. Just the two of us doing everything: composing, lyrics, recording, mixing, design etc. The idea was to translate our vision in possibly purest form. As such we didn’t seek any advice from anyone outside the core of the band, not even a „fresh pair of ears” to listen and comment on the songs or production. Since the album is tailored 100% to our vision, we had no idea whether people would be able to relate to it or not before it was actually released.

I think MGŁA has a very distinctive sound that has carried through all three albums, but I also think the music has changed and evolved, especially since the early EPs. Do you agree, and if you do, how would you describe MGŁA’s musical progression? And how would you compare “Exercises In Futility” to “Groza” and “With Hearts Toward None”?

It has certainly evolved, in line with our evolution as people and as musicians, but I like to see it as a very „focused” evolution; improvement in performance, language, recording, etc. all serve to get closer to ideal fulfillment of the vision, the very core stripped of everything unnecessary. Comparison of „Exercises in futility” to the earlier material was already mentioned – most coherent and natural. Emotional content-wise, darker and bleaker.

The range of music that could be called “black metal” has expanded so dramatically over the last decade or more that I think it may be the most interesting and fertile field in metal — even though a lot of the changes have outraged some keepers of the sacred flame. I don’t know if you listen to black metal in your spare time or think about such things. But if you do, I wonder if you have any thoughts about the state of black metal as it now exists, and about MGŁA’s own place in the field?

I listen to a lot of black metal, although it’s mainly the mid-’90s recordings that remain my favourites and the works I can relate to the most. I value the conscious, individual approach and attempts to do something different than anyone else over textbook templates. I don’t pay much attention to what gets called black metal, what doesn’t, and what the scene police has to say on the subject. To me, it’s the „spark” and the emotions embedded in music that define black metal. Whether it’s goat worshipping primitivism or a highly complicated progressive approach, or whichever the subject matter and utilized symbolism is, comes secondary.

I’m a big fan of the drumming on this new album. It seems to me a vital ingredient, along with the powerful riffs and the memorable melodies — a kind of force for change in the music as it unfolds. Do you and Darkside work together in developing the drum rhythms and patterns, or is this pretty much his sole domain? And were you seeking a change in the drumming as compared to previous releases?

We work together from scratch when it comes to arrangements of the songs. In terms of actual drum patterns, except basic decisions on which rhythm is used in which part that are done together, 99% is Darkside’s work. There was no intention to seek a change in drumming other than natural development & vision of the whole album.

As well-liked and much-respected as “With Hearts Toward None” was, I’m seeing even higher levels of praise being showered on EIF, including by some very talented musicians. Words like “album of the year” are being used frequently. I don’t know if you pay attention to such things. Are you also sensing the enthusiasm of the reception to this album, and if so, how do you feel about that?

As mentioned previously, the album was very specifically tailored to our own expectations. Because of this it’s somehow suprising that so many people can relate to & appreciate it. Of course, we don’t mind. But since our work here is done and now the album is living its own life, we focus on the future works.

Photo by Małgorzata Boska

I know a decision was made to begin streaming this album on YouTube before the official release instead of on the release date, as originally planned. It seems like maybe your hand was forced by someone leaking the album. Could you explain what happened and what your thinking was?

Yes, the album was leaked. We planned to upload the whole LP on the internet on the date of release anyway, so it was not a big deal that it happened a few days earlier. With this sort of situation you can either 1) whine about internet piracy, 2) pretend nothing has happened, 3) take action and openly state what’s the situation. With our approach to Mgła, variant 3 was the natural. We wanted the whole album to be available in streaming form; it was an attempt of fair approach to the audience – „here’s the album, this is how it sounds like, if you like it, you can buy it”.

You have another band, Kriegsmaschine, that has been just as active as MGŁA. As musical ideas occur to you, how do you decide whether they are better suited for one than the other? Do you have compartments in your mind, one for MGŁA and one for Kriegsmaschine, and if so, how do you define them?

At this point Kriegsmaschine is operating as a studio project only. It’s musically much darker and unsettling material than Mgła. Despite both being black metal, it comes very naturally to decide on the musical aspects, as the projects operate in slightly different mindset: while Mgła is the gnashing of teeth, KSM is nadir and despair. Also, KSM is musically much more focused on rhythm, while Mgła is more about harmony and melody.

You have announced a series of 10 performances in the U.S. in November, finishing with one in my hometown of Seattle. I can’t remember MGŁA playing a full tour of the U.S. before. Is this the first time? And can you tell us something about who will be performing with you in the live band for this tour?

It was our second time in the USA after a performance at Maryland Deathfest in 2014, and first tour. The tour included 7 shows in the East coast with Mortuary Drape and Sangus, and 4 shows in the West coast with Weregoat and Sempiternal Dusk. It was certainly a worthwhile experience. Our session members, the bassist/vocalist and guitarist, come from the band Medico Peste.

Photo by Stefan Raduta

MGŁA has also scheduled a series of appearances in Europe in December (I count 8 at this point). Will the same musicians be with you on stage for those shows?

Yes. Live incarnation of Mgła works as a band, and while technically the other two members are session, we see them as part of the band, contributing to the vision and not just playing their parts. The bassist has been working with us since day one of live activity, and the guitarist has joined in 2015 as the previous one (also from Medico Peste) has moved to a different country.

Do you have goals or plans for MGŁA in 2016, such as additional tours or further recording?

2016 will be focused on live activity for Mgła. There will be two European tours – with Aosoth andDeus Mortem in March, and with Behemoth and Secrets of the Moon in October, as well as quite a few of other performances & festival appearances.

I appreciate your time and patience in answering these questions. I have no doubt that I’ve failed to ask something important, so please feel free to share any other thoughts or information about the new album or MGŁA’s activities that you would like fans to know.

Mgła is better experienced than read about. Anyone interested is free to listen to the material. Thank you for the interview.

After the mid 2000’s, a new era has been defined in the history of black metal. Some old names and newer one switched toward more modern ‘darker’ sound with occultism and esotericism based lyrics and ideologies. Netherlands, which may not be that much popular or known for procreating ‘good’ black metal bands, but some bands really stood out from growing Dutch black metal scenario. Sammath, formed in 1994 in Netherlands, is spreading spiteful hatred amongst the fans around the globe arrogantly through furious sound. The band has grown up to be considered fairly ‘big’ with their latest effort “Godless Arrogance”. We had a chance to talk with Jan Kruitwagen, the front-man and the sole member of Sammath since 1994, writing all the music itself. Throughout our conversation, Jan talked about the difficulties he faced with his band and also the ideologies he stands for. He…